


Out of Habit and Necessity

by danvssomethingorother



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, bitter sweet start with a happy ending, two idiots in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 13:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19993309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danvssomethingorother/pseuds/danvssomethingorother
Summary: It was Crowley’s habit to pull away from the intimacy and it became a necessity for Aziraphale to withhold any semblance of intimacy.





	Out of Habit and Necessity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoSomethingElse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoSomethingElse/gifts).



> I did some kiss prompts today

-1967-

“You go too fast for me, Crowley.”

Aziraphale had stalled, Crowley couldn’t take his eyes off him as he took a deep sigh and gripped his pant leg. It was like he was waiting. Waiting for Crowley to react to the statement.

Those pale, breathtaking eyes, those eyes he had spent many nights lying awake and imagining looking down into his own just as love struck as his, glanced at him. The stare held for a moment, he was tempting Crowley to act, to demand him to stay.

Crowley couldn’t take his stiff hands from the steering wheel, he couldn’t do much but stare at him, his angel, and only dream about the things he could do to make him stay.

Out of a sense of habit, he let him go. It was always going to be here, he knew, he was never going to stay on his own free will, he wasn’t going to put him a cage. His love would be a beautiful golden cage for that gentle and loving dove, he would protect him from all the evils of the world and only let him know luxury.

He made sure he was out of sight before revving up his car engine, making sure no one touched a hair on his pretty little head in this dank part of town not fit for an angel before slamming down on the petal and flying past the angel who gripped his heart and gave him a look of disapproval as he shot around the corner.

He’d been letting him go since Eden.

Letting little touches slip between the cracks, letting silent, intimate pauses go unnoticed, always going slow for him. Never rushing, never grabbing him and stopping this charade and game they played with a long kiss. They had so many chances, so much time.

There was terror igniting through the once sleepy streets of London as the heart broken demon shot through the streets, not letting little things like traffic laws or pedestrian lives take any vacancy in his mind. Maybe it was God or maybe just sheer dumb luck no one was struck as the fires of hell grew hotter on the Bentley’s wheels as steam filled the streets as the frustration, anger and heart ache washed from the demon.

If he was smart, he would have coiled his body around the angel and never let him go. Showering him with all the love in his heart, the only light left in that black soul of his, all that love and passion belonged to that feather brained fool.

He ought to swerve back around, back to Soho, back to that little shop. He ought to march right in and not even ask, just take. Pull that angel close and deliver to him all this pent-up admiration and love, the nonsense only a being of love could dredge up from a demon. Pull him into a passionate kiss, a perfect Hollywood ending as they say. They could even drive off together into the sunset, never to be seen by heaven or hell again.

Instead he did nothing, he let the subject drop like he always did, he drove like the creature of hell he was putting a true fear of god into anyone on the road at this hour until he felt the anger drop. It was replaced with a sadness and fear of being alone and a deep longing. A longing for someone he would never have.

He did as he always did and always would, out of habit, he pushed away the very thought of wanting to be intimate with Aziraphale. 

He went home, gripping the thermos tightly and threw himself in bed, unable to keep his eyes off the labor of love his angel had gifted him. He couldn’t hold onto his anger and frustrations seeing the risk he was willing to take for him.

He closed his eyes, running his fingers across the tartan thermos and just pretended those soft and well-manicured fingers were there brushing against his.

He imagined kissing him on the forehead as he left for the day, gentle pecks against the lips as he headed to bed while his angel read the night away, long, passionate kisses on cold winter nights…

Those were the habits he desired most, not his known habits of frustration and arguments and denial.

\--- 

-28 min before the end of the world-

“I’ve been there. You’re better off without him.”

Aziraphale knew what the man was trying to say and even what he was implying but that just wasn’t true. He wasn’t better off without Crowley. There was a funny feeling bubbling in his stomach, it could easily be confused for the stomach flew if he were mortal and those kinds of things affected him.

This was likely to be the last time he would ever see Crowley and if he didn’t succeed, the last time he would see this world. Those were very troubling thoughts for him, he didn’t know if he knew anything else. Crowley was there, he was at the beginning, in the Garden where Aziraphale was created to guard it and humanity had been born.

He did what he always did, he shoved those feelings about Crowley and any hint of anxiety or uncertainty down as far as he could shove it. He couldn’t deal with those troublesome thoughts now. He liked to image he shoved all those unwanted and quite frankly unneeded feelings, into a suitcase. His metaphorical baggage was popping out at every corner of the case and it was ready to burst open any moment and make him finally acknowledge the heavy case that was getting harder to drag around, but it could stay closed just a few more moments. Just a little longer so he could save the world on his own if he had to. 

This was a necessity. Not only something necessary for himself but the greater good as well. 

Aziraphale was gullible and he was naïve, and yes, he could be ‘stupid’ as Crowley had put it, but he wasn’t that oblivious he didn’t notice what had been happening the last six thousand years between the two.

The lingering touches after they both grabbed the wine bottle. How neither could look away from the other after a bit too much of said wine. The desperate beg for Crowley to stay on the cusp of his lips after every rescue. He sometimes found himself staying longer then he ought to in bars and restaurants and in St James’s, hoping for Crowley to make the move so he wouldn’t have to do it. That just wasn’t proper angel behavior. 

He couldn’t be caught consorting with the enemy. That would hardly turn out well for Crowley if Hell would ever find out and Aziraphale always felt his heart skipping a little beat wondering if this was going into ‘fallen angel’ territory. It was a simple necessity for both of them to not go further. 

The almighty didn’t make mistakes, but he sometimes wondered if there was something defective about him. Angels weren’t meant to feel such a selfish love for another, want to be loved in return when an angel’s only job was to spread love.

He wondered if the almighty had made him this way to always test him in a world full of sin and desires. He was so far away from Heaven on Earth, it would be easier for him to fall into temptation.

He quickened his pace, feeling weight of that baggage stronger than ever right now but he had no time to unpack any of it or sort through his troublesome emotions. It would do no one any good for him to take a tumble, tumble downwards for daring to question things he shouldn’t.

He needed to hurry back to his shop and ---

He didn’t know, try to contact god, try to contact Crowley, decide if he was going to Tadfield on his own, something. He wasn’t very good under pressure or making hard decisions, but he would have to manage. Just this once he would need to see something through and get it right. Just this once.

So caught up in his own thoughts he almost didn’t feel their hands on him until it was too late and Michael had already pinned him up against the wall.

“Hello, Aziraphale.” 

He gave all three angels a weary smile and returned the greeting. This wasn’t the first time his fellow angels had been frustrated with him, oh no far from it, but this was the first time he was afraid of them. He had never thought the good guys so to speak would be capable of murdering him, but he was reevaluating those thoughts fast just looking at the anger in their eyes. 

“We’ve been learning some disturbing things about you- you’ve been a bit of a fallen angel, haven’t you? Consorting with the enemy…?” 

That was certainly one way of putting it, Aziraphale felt the blood draining from his face and his heart thundering loudly in his chest and tried to deny that. He glanced down for a brief moment as the fallen angel retort finally settled into his brain, imaging taking a tumble down, down, down right now. Leaving Her light but would it be so bad? He would finally be able to—

No. It would do no one any good to think of falling and never being able to feel love again. Crowley was the only demon Aziraphale knew who was capable of such things, he was more then likely, just as defective as Aziraphale himself.

“I haven’t been consorting! Just exchanging information. Trying to stop this all from happening!”

As expected, no one was going to buy that.

“Terrible choice. Don’t think your boyfriend in the dark glasses can get you special treatment in Hell. He’s in trouble too.”

Everything past that was such a blur, his mind was stuck on the fact that they had come to the conclusion that he and Crowley were dating. In their minds, he and Crowley had taken on the role of all those star-crossed lovers and tragic ends lovers like them got in the books he read.

His response was rambling and hardly a response or defense at all, his mind and heart were stuck on the word ‘boyfriend’. He was a defective angel who felt a personal desire to be loved instead of giving it away and Crowley was a defective demon who could love. They had been created there, together in that garden, together after all. It was just ineffable they were both cut from the same cloth, both lacking perfection.

In Aziraphale’s deepest fantasies and daydreams, it would be a necessity for them to finally join hands, foreheads touching and noses brushing together as they finally kissed each other. Two halves of the same soul bound by fate finally joining as one.

Those weren’t real though, those were fictious stories he came up with to heal loneliness. In reality, they would just be killed for showing their respective sides they were defective.

Aziraphale felt that pang of loneliness as he dialed Crowley’s number for what could be the last time, they wouldn’t even get to die together.

\---

-the first day of the rest of their lives-

The back room of Aziraphale’s bookstore, half drunk already and rambling on about nothing and everything was where the demon and angel had settled down after their diner at the Ritz.

It almost felt normal. It almost felt like the past eleven years hadn’t happened. Aziraphale felt himself sobering just thinking of the apocalypse that wasn’t. Thinking about all the things they could have missed out on together if Adam hadn’t stopped it all and if they hadn’t figured out what Agnes meant for them to do to fool Heaven and Hell.

He set his wine glass down and watched Crowley do the same, both very in sync with each other after all this time.

“What’s on your mind, angel?”

It would be so easy to say nothing and leave it unsaid as he had done in the past. It would be so easy to make this another necessary decision at keeping his distance and keeping up old habits of just going on like nothing had happened.

“Do you know what my last thoughts were before that idiot Shadwell barged in my door discorporating me?”

Crowley thought about it a moment, a sly smile crossing his face, the same wily serpent he had first fell in love with in the garden.

“How boring heaven was going to be for all of eternity?”

Aziraphale shook his head softly and let actions speak louder then his words ever could gently placing both his hands on each of Crowley’s cheeks and resting their foreheads together, gently tickling his nose against Crowley’s as he had always imagined. He found himself blushing at Crowley’s hitched breath and thundering erratic heart beat but he couldn’t stop yet.

“You,” he breathed against his lips before pressing them together, feeling Crowley trip over himself in almost excitement as he latched tightly onto his angel and deepened the kiss. 

The kiss was sloppy and messy. Both falling off the couch in their desperation to touch the other. Giggling and nesting their foreheads together, letting themselves catch their breath.

This kiss would lead to a habit, a necessity to finally kill the loneliness that had settled in their hearts, and above all else, a symbol of love. Finally able to hold and love each other like this every day for the rest of their lives without worrying about sides or what counts as consorting.

Their side. They had found a happy ending to what very well could have been a tragic love story.

They had a lot of baggage to sort between the two of them later, but this, this was perfect for now.


End file.
